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...The SCU is only being discussed because I said "what could the Senate legally do to challenge an Emperor?" You said "well, they could pass a SCU", to which I replied "no, they can't, cos he can veto it". So why are you even discussing the SCU?

Ultimately the SCU remains under discussion because you're trying to distract from the fact that either @caldrail or myself have successfully refuted every argument you've advanced by trying to append conditions to your original argument ex post facto.

See your above quote @Caesarmagnus. You advanced an argument, said argument was refuted. So, you claim that the refutation is invalid because "details, conditions and requisites that [you] withheld."

Were I to accept this and address your minutia then I would ultimately be doing you a disservice by encouraging/rewarding fallacious reasoning.

As for your reply to the effect that "no, he can veto it," I showed a source demonstrating that veto could be vetoed. You simply claimed that "you're wrong."
Whereas I have consistently sourced you've consistently contradicted without offering sources in support of those contradictions.

Ultimately the SCU remains under discussion because you're trying to distract from the fact that either @caldrail or myself have successfully refuted every argument you've advanced by trying to append conditions to your original argument ex post facto.

See your above quote @Caesarmagnus. You advanced an argument, said argument was refuted. So, you claim that the refutation is invalid because "details, conditions and requisites that [you] withheld."

Were I to accept this and address your minutia then I would ultimately be doing you a disservice by encouraging/rewarding fallacious reasoning.

As for your reply to the effect that "no, he can veto it," I showed a source demonstrating that veto could be vetoed. You simply claimed that "you're wrong."

Whereas I have consistently sourced you've consistently contradicted without offering sources in support of those contradictions.

You haven’t shown any of the things you claim above, and neither has Cal. Let’s take the example of the veto above. You said “I showed a source demonstrating that veto could be vetoed”. You didn’t, because as I explained already the (wikipedia) link you provided was to an unrelated Consular veto power, whereas Augustus and the Emperors had the Tribunican veto power. They are totally different, and you obviously need to go read more about the subject matter. The consular “veto” you describe was a fringe power involving specific situations like sentencing cases (by another consul) that would seldom if ever have been invoked. The consuls had no generalised veto power whatever. If the Senate passed a motion, the Consul had no power to veto it. It was the Tribunes who had the power of veto over laws, etc, in the republic. Consuls had no power to veto the SCU whatever. Tribunes did. Augustus had a Tribunican veto, so the wiki passage you linked is irrelevant.

I ask again; if you believe the Senate had the ability to oppose the emperors through the legal process, explain to me the kind of steps they could take to do this.

NB- not that your wiki link showed a consular "veto could be vetoed" anyway, but that's beside the point.

I can think of a few, such as Augustus, Claudius 1 to a point, Hadrian (?) and Marcus Aurelius, even though he was responsible for Commodus. Constantine?---Just about any good he did was wiped out by his apart in inflicting Christianity on the world.

A: They could pass a SCU (the ultimate decree that instituted martial law)

Me: The Emperor can just veto it for starters (see link showing he has the tribunican veto)

A: Someone will veto his veto

Me: The tribunican veto doesn’t work that way, you can’t veto a veto. If you could then the last 100 years of Roman Republican history wouldn’t make sense. There is no evidence for this whatever, and countless evidence against it. For instance, when the conservatives used Marcus Octavius as a pawn to veto the radical laws of Tiberius Gracchus. If it were possible for Tiberius Grachus to merely “veto the veto” of Octavius, he would have had no problems and the laws would have sailed through. Instead he couldn’t, and had to try and persuade him to withdraw his veto (before purporting to have him voted from office). Hundreds of other examples exist demonstrating this reality. There was no capacity by tribunes to “veto a veto”.

A: Yes it does, here is a link to the (unrelated) CONSULAR veto power.

Me: That isn’t the same thing at all. Consuls had limited power to block the actions of the other consul. They had no general lawmaking veto power at all. The Emperors did on occasion hold the office of consul, but that was not the source of their power (their imperium maius alone overrode the consuls by default, and they possessed numerous other powers I outlined), and it was not the source of their veto power (which was tribunican in nature, per the link).

So I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me what this legal avenue to oppose a stable Emperor was. Clearly it wasn’t the SCU.

I can think of a few, such as Augustus, Claudius 1 to a point, Hadrian (?) and Marcus Aurelius, even though he was responsible for Commodus. Constantine?---Just about any good he did was wiped out by his apart in inflicting Christianity on the world.
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I can think of a few, such as Augustus, Claudius 1 to a point, Hadrian (?) and Marcus Aurelius, even though he was responsible for Commodus. Constantine?---Just about any good he did was wiped out by his apart in inflicting Christianity on the world.

Christianity is not bad, most of our values come from them. And if was Irish Christians who first spoke out against slavery, although they became slaves themselves when the Vikings arrived, but when Honorius murdered the wives and children of his Germanic troops, that was immoral and evil in the nth degree. Basil was a good emperor but his brother was a party animal. And when Clovis converted strictly for political reasons (I think he was in truth an atheist who just chose a side). Rulers often used the notion that they were annointed by god to inflict misery on everyone else...like Henry VIII.

I've discussed this before, and I think the position is somewhat more nuanced and that Marcus Aurelius is worthy of significant scorn for his decisions which were both clearly self-interested and lacking the stoic objectivity he claimed to live by. Lest anyone forget, Commodus was not his first choice for heir. Aurelius waited until his predecessor died, and then started naming his infant kids as heirs from the get go. He made no effort to determine if they were suitable to rule, and there were certainly emperors who bypassed the most direct bloodlines and ancestors to chose a suitable heir (even if not their son per se). He also could have married his daughter (much older than his sons) to a suitable successor, and/or had said successor (perhaps a childless man) adopt his sons and raise them as his own, thus ensuring a strong successor who could hold the throne until his children were of an age that made them suitable (and judging among them for the best candidate). His could have ensured his bloodline continued without his insistence on his eldest sons being heirs (which frankly wasn't the Roman tradition).

I agree that the issue is a nuanced one. But I think the value of the point originally being made is that some have been inclined to view the Antonine dynasty as a regime that had a preconceived notion that it was better to adopt worthy heirs than to choose a son if available (not that this is what you think; I'm not attempting to strawman you). The reality is that Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius did not have sons. Nerva adopted Trajan to avoid getting overthrown by the Praetorians and the general Nigrinus (based in Syria). Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus adopted men from within the family rather than appointed biological sons, whom they did not have. This isn't the same thing as what was seen in the Tetrarchic period, when in 293, 305, 308 and 311 biological sons failed to succeed their fathers.

That being said, there was indeed no rule saying that a biological son, when available, should succeed his father as emperor. During the Julio-Claudian period, when the emperorship was in its earliest stages of evolution, emperors appear to have employed adoption to furnish themselves with dual heirs. Augustus adopted his stepson/son-in-law Tiberius despite having a grandson in Postumus Agrippa, Tiberius adopted his nephew Germanicus while having a son in Drusus, and later did the same regarding his grandson Gemellus and grand-nephew Caligula, and Claudius adopted his stepson/son-in-law Nero despite his son Britannicus. Who received which posts and honours first appears to have been based on age. Of course, this practice lent itself to intra-dynastic murder and did not outlast the Julio-Claudians. Vespasian prioritised biological sons, and then we have the Antonines. So I think it's hard to get an idea of what exactly the norm of succession was when Marcus Aurelius took power. Ultimately he chose Commodus and Annius, and from then onward blood succession was the norm, thus the practice of the Severans, the 'Crisis' emperors and ultimately the late Roman and Byzantine emperors. From the view of Diocletian, no emperor since the advent of the Flavian dynasty had adopted an heir at the expense of a blood descendent (with the exception of Severus temporarily adopting Albinus, which was a political necessity during a civil war). It is thus curious (and a topic of my PhD thesis) that the Tetrarchs adopted heirs at the expense of biological sons. But I agree that, at the time of Marcus Aurelius' accession, what constituted the norms of hereditary succession may have still been up-in-the-air. Indeed, Julian thought it fit to have a go at Marcus Aurelius in The Caesars, although by then Julian understood what the norms were, as expressed in Marcus Aurelius' fictional response to criticism: "It is the custom to hand down the succession to a man's sons, and all men desire to do so."

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